The present invention relates to a hydrogen fuel manufacturing system, a hydrogen fuel manufacturing method, and a hydrogen fuel manufacturing program.
In recent years, natural resource depletion and environmental destruction are regarded as a big problem on the earth, and it is highly required to establish the so-called zero emission type societies by means of recyclable energies. To solve this problem, it is recommendable to utilize natural energy sources such as the wind force and sunlight or the like. It is also recommended to exploit naturally existing energies that remain unused. Utilization of hydrogen that is almost infinitely present in the natural world also attracts the attention of those skilled in the art. The hydrogen is a storable and stockable energy source, which has focused attention as an alternative energy to fossil fuels.
Unfortunately, the active use of the above-noted natural energies is not yet widely popularized so that currently available electrical power generation still relies on the power generation with traditional fossil fuels as raw materials, which emit a great amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) gases. One reason of this is as follows. Since the quantity of electric power to be generated by using natural energy sources is much variable depending upon natural environments, it is very difficult to constantly supply electric power in a demand-oriented manner. However, in the today's trend of urging the inhibition of ecological destruction, people who demands clean energies has increased in number.
Consequently, in order to avoid these energy problems, it is expected to introduce a hydrogen energy and fuel battery cells using the same into land vehicles and homes. The hydrogen is chemically reacted with oxygen to release an energy while emitting water only. This reaction emits nothing other than the water. The hydrogen is manufacturable from several raw material by various techniques including, but not limited to, electrolyzation of water and quality modification of fossil energies and methanol compositions. With this approach, it becomes possible to store or stock it in high-pressure tanks or liquefaction tanks or hydrogen-absorbed alloys. By letting it chemically alter into the form of an organic hydride or methanol or the like, it is also possible to stock and supply hydrogen fuels.
Additionally, taking into consideration risks of an extreme energy loss occurring depending on the supply forms and also economical profits for high-pressure hydrogen, it seems likely that the business investment must be as small in scale as possible. However, using small-scale facility poses another problem as to an unwanted increase in cost or price of such hydrogen energy, which can occur due to the lack of an ability to smoothly perform the fuel supply required.
In addition, the hydrogen is generally believed to be a dangerous material, which requires equipment facility to have sufficient safety remedies so that an increased cost is taken for initial investment while increasing running costs thereof. Thus it is necessary to sell it while adding certain extra values to the hydrogen.
An approach to solving the above-noted problems is disclosed, for example, in JP-A-2001-315111 and JP-A-2003-130295. In this approach, a hydrogen-fueled land vehicle is designed to have communication functionalities, for informing a hydrogen supplying station of the fuel demander's fuel consumption information to thereby comprehend a hydrogen amount required for the hydrogen-fueled car, which is supposed to come to the hydrogen station sooner or later. Thus it becomes possible to set up a plan for filling the hydrogen into each hydrogen car at the hydrogen station. This indicates that even at a relatively small-scale hydrogen supply station, it is possible by manufacturing the hydrogen according to the plan to perform smooth and stable hydrogen refilling. It also indicated that the facility costs are reduced while lowering hydrogen prices.
However, the hydrogen is faced with several problems concerning the filling density and safety and also the necessity to argue about the inevitability of the use of fossil fuels, which problems occur depending upon the type of each supplying form. Hence, the hydrogen supply form is not exactly determined yet. Due to this, at the first stage or “seedtime” of the hydrogen that begins to be commercially popularized as a useful energy in human society, the hydrogen supply form varies from consumer to consumer and is thought to be hardly standardized. Accordingly, upon popularization of some hydrogen fuels, each hydrogen fuel is manufactured, resulting in scramble for the hydrogen that is a raw material. This leads to an increase in hydrogen price due to demand-versus-supply principles in the marketplace, which results in the hydrogen becoming higher in retail price.